Us is a 2019 American psychological horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele, and starring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker. The story follows Adelaide Wilson and her family, who are attacked by a group of menacing doppelgängers, called the "Tethered".

The project was announced in February 2018. Peele produced the film alongside Jason Blum and Sean McKittrick, having previously collaborated with them on Get Out and BlacKkKlansman. Filming took place in California, including Los Angeles, Pasadena and Santa Cruz, from July to October 2018.

Us premiered at South by Southwest on March 8, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 22, by Universal Pictures. The film was a commercial success, grossing $256 million against a budget of $20 million, and received widespread critical acclaim, having been included in various lists of the greatest horror films of the 21st century.

Plot In 1986, little Adelaide Thomas wanders away from her parents at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and enters a funhouse. She encounters a doppelgänger of herself in the house of mirrors. Following the encounter, she suddenly stops speaking, and withdraws from her family.

Thirty-three years later, Adelaide, now a woman, reluctantly joins her husband, Gabe Wilson, and their children, Zora and Jason, on a vacation. They are joined by friends, Josh and Kitty Tyler, along with their twin daughters, Becca and Lindsey, at the beach. During their outing, they observe paramedics removing the body of a man holding a sign that matches one Adelaide had seen on the day she encountered her doppelgänger, as a small girl. Later, Jason spots an individual bearing a striking resemblance to the deceased, motionless with outstretched arms and bloodied hands.

That night, Adelaide relays her story to Gabe, when the lights suddenly go out. Jason notices a family of four in the driveway, who break into the house and corner the Wilsons. The intruders are the Wilsons' doppelgängers: Red (Adelaide's doppelganger, who she met all those years ago), Pluto (Jason's pyromaniac, facially scarred double), Umbrae (Zora's sadistic double) and Abraham (Gabe's animalistic double). Red is the only double who can speak, albeit in a raspy voice. She explains that they are called "the Tethered", as they share a soul with their counterparts and have come to "untether" themselves. The Wilsons are separated and terrorized by their doppelgängers. Jason discovers that Pluto mirrors his actions. After Gabe kills Abraham, the family escapes.

Meanwhile, the Tyler family is attacked and murdered in their home by their doppelgängers. The Wilsons arrive and are attacked as well, but they manage to overpower and kill the Tylers' doubles. They watch the news and learn that the Tethered have been murdering their equivalents across the city then joining hands to form a human chain (similar to the one from the Hands Across America demonstration) that surrounds the city. The Wilsons decide to drive along the coast and escape to Mexico. While they are leaving, Umbrae intercepts the car but Zora throws her off the car and kills her; Adelaide goes separately to comfort Umbrae as she dies.

Arriving at the boardwalk, the Wilsons find many townspeople slaughtered. The road is blocked by a burning car. Jason, realizing it is a trap set by Pluto, orders everyone out of the car. Before Pluto can ignite the family's car, Jason walks backwards, causing Pluto to do the same and thus walk directly into the fire, to Adelaide's sadness. While the Wilsons are distracted by Pluto burning to death, Red appears and snatches Jason away. Adelaide chases Red to the funhouse where they first met and finds a secret entrance that leads to an underground facility overrun by white rabbits, where she finds Red in a classroom.

Red vaguely explains that the Tethered are duplicates created, presumably by the government, to control the populace. When the experiment failed, the Tethered were abandoned underground mindlessly mimicking the actions of their counterparts and surviving on raw rabbit meat. After the other doppelgängers realized Red was "different", when she snapped them out of their lethargy, she spent years organizing them to escape and take vengeance by murdering their counterparts. Red and Adelaide begin to fight, but Red evades and counters all of Adelaide's attacks. When Adelaide allows Red to attack, she impales Red with a fireplace poker, then strangles her and breaks her neck. She rescues Jason from a locker with Jason also rescuing one of the rabbits.

As she escapes in an ambulance with her family, Adelaide reflects back to the night she first met Red: it's revealed that she is the Tethered doppelgänger and that Red was the original Adelaide. The doppelgänger, having choked Adelaide unconscious, dragged and trapped her underground then returned to the surface to usurp her life. Jason looks at his mother who simply smiles, while the Tethered form a human chain that stretches across the countryside.

Cast Performer Main character "Tethered" character Lupita Nyong'o Adelaide "Addy" Wilson Red Winston Duke Gabriel "Gabe" Wilson Abraham Shahadi Wright Joseph Zora Wilson Umbrae Evan Alex Jason Wilson Pluto Elisabeth Moss Kitty Tyler Dahlia Tim Heidecker Josh Tyler Tex Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Russel Thomas Weyland Anna Diop Rayne Thomas Eartha Cali SheldonBecca TylerIo Noelle Sheldon Lindsey Tyler Nix Madison Curry Young Adelaide Young Red Ashley McKoy Teenage Adelaide Teenage Red Napiera Groves Dr. Foster Lon Gowan Don Alan Frazier Ferdie Jeremiah Duke Nicholson Danny Tony Dustin Ybarra Troy Brand Nathan Harrington Glen Jack Kara Hayward Nancy Syd Jordan Peele Dying Rabbit/Fun House Narrator

Production Development

After being dismayed with the "genre confusion" over his previous film, Get Out, Peele opted to make his next film a "full-on" horror film. Peele has said that an inspiration for Us was The Twilight Zone episode "Mirror Image", which was centered on a young woman and her evil doppelgänger.

Peele also revealed that the idea of the Tethered living underground came to him when he was a teenager taking the train home from studying at Sarah Lawrence College:

Casting On May 8, 2018, it was announced that Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke and Elisabeth Moss were all in negotiations to star in the film, with Nyong'o and Duke portraying a black couple, and Moss portraying one half of a white couple. Nyong'o later confirmed her casting by posting the film's promotional poster on her Instagram. The rest of the cast, including Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex were all confirmed in July of that year.

Peele saw the characters of the film as an "archetypal foursome", with Adelaide being the leader, Zora being the warrior, Gabe being jester/fool and Jason being the wiz/magician. For her role, Nyong'o had to use a different voice for the character of Red. She said her performance was inspired by the condition spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that causes a person's voice to go into periods of spasm. In order to perfect her voice, she "worked with an ear, nose, and throat doctor, a vocal therapist, and my dialect coach to try and make sure I could do it and do it safely. 'Cause I had two roles to play, I couldn't afford to damage my voice."

Filming Principal photography began on July 30, 2018, in Santa Cruz, California, including their famous Boardwalk. Most of the film was shot in Los Angeles, and the main house featured is located in Pasadena. The house had modifications and the team spent six weeks there. Filming wrapped on October 8, 2018.

Post-production The visual effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic and supervised by Grady Cofer.

Michael Abels, who had previously scored Peele's Get Out, returned to do the same for Us.

Soundtrack

The 1995 Luniz song "I Got 5 on It" is heavily featured in this film, first at the beginning, when the family is driving to the beach and then later on in the film when the "tethered" family breaks into the vacation home. The once-fun song transmogrifies into an eerily orchestral "Tethered Mix", slowing everything down, and fully indulging the ominous quality of the film. Due to the track's popularity upon the trailer's release, it was edited into the final cut of the film, appearing during the climax. Waxwork Records announced in August 2019 that they would release the soundtrack to the film on vinyl, which contained Abels's popular score. The N.W.A song "Fuck tha Police" is also heard when Kitty Tyler tells the voice assistant Ophelia to "call the police", moments before she is killed by her Tethered counterpart, Dahlia, and the song plays throughout when the Wilsons enter the Tyler family's home. The ending features the Minnie Riperton song "Les Fleurs".

Marketing The official trailer was released on December 25, 2018. The trailer, which was set to a darker version of the song "I Got 5 on It", featured a similar tone, editing, and shots as Peele's Get Out, prompting speculation that the two films were set in the same universe.

A second trailer was released on February 3, 2019, for Super Bowl LIII. That trailer featured a narration by Lupita Nyong'o's character, Adelaide, speaking with her husband Gabriel about the strange coincidences happening since they arrived at their beach house, and describing it as a "black cloud" hanging over them. The new theatrical release date, March 22, was announced at the end of the trailer. Deadline Hollywood estimated the studio spent around $77 million on promotion and advertisements for the film.

Release Us had its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival (SXSW) on March 8, 2019. It was also screened on March 6, 2019, before its official release, at Howard University. The film was originally scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on March 15, 2019, but was pushed back a week to March 22, following the announcement of its SXSW premiere.

Home media Us was released on 4K UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD on June 18, 2019. The 4K release is an upscale from the 2K master.

Reception Box office Us grossed $175.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $80.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $256.1 million, against a production budget of $20 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $119million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.

In the United States and Canada, initial tracking had Us grossing $35–40million in its opening weekend. By the week of its release, estimates had risen to $45–50million, with advance ticket sales on Fandango outpacing A Quiet Place ($50.2 million) and Get Out ($33.7 million). The film made $28.9 million on its first day, including $7.4 million from Thursday night previews, one of the best-ever for a horror film and far higher than the Thursday night preview numbers for Get Out, which only grossed $1.8 million, increasing weekend estimates for Us to $68 million. It went on to earn $71.1 million at the box office, debuting at number one and becoming the second best opening for a live-action original film after Avatar ($77 million in 2009), as well as the third-best total for a horror film after It ($123.4 million in 2017) and Halloween ($76.2 million in 2018) and the best ever opening for an original horror film not based on a known property. In its second weekend, the film made $33.6 million, dropping 52.7% (slightly above-average for a horror film but much larger than the 15% seen by Get Out) and finishing second behind newcomer Dumbo.

Critical response